The sun poured wintry bright into the house-walled gulf of a street that in my isolation seemed immeasurably vast and empty. I think my senses distorted the scene. There was the terrific glitter of glass, the clatter of traffic. A puff of wind whirled dust and grit and particles of straw into the air. The shapes of advancing pedestrians towered close above me, then, stiff with sudden attention, passed me by. My legs grew a little numb and my brain confused. The strident whistling of a butcher’s boy, with an empty, bloodstained tray over his shoulder, suddenly ceased. Saucer-eyed, he stood stock still, gulped and gaped. I kept on my course. A yelp of astonishment rent the air. Whereupon, as it seemed, from diverse angles, similar boys seemed to leap out of the ground and came whooping and revolving across the street in my direction. And now the blood so hummed in my head that it was rather my nerves than my ears which informed me of a steadily increasing murmur and trampling behind me.
With extraordinary vividness I recall the vision of a gigantic barouche gliding along towards me in the shine and the dust; and seated up in it a high, pompous lady who at one moment with rigid urbanity inclined her head apparently in my direction, and at the next, her face displeased as if at an offensive odour, had sunk back into her cushions, oblivious not only of Beechwood but of the whole habitable globe. Simultaneously, I was aware, even as I hastened on, first that the acquaintance whose salute she had acknowledged was Mr. Crimble, and next, that with incredible rapidity he had wheeled himself about and had instantaneously transfixed his entire attention on some object in the window of a hatter’s.
Until this moment, as I say, a confused but blackening elation had filled my mind. But at sight of Mr. Crimble’s rook-like stooping shoulders I began to be afraid. My shoe stumbled against a jutting paving-stone. I almost fell. Whereupon the mute concourse at my heels—spreading tail of me, the comet—burst into a prolonged squealing roar of delight. The next moment Pollie was at my side, stooping to my rescue. It was too late. One glance over my shoulder—and terror and hatred of the whole human race engulfed me like a sea. I struck savagely at Pollie’s cotton-gloved hand. Shivering, with clenched, sticky teeth, I began to run.
Why this panic? Who would have harmed me? And yet on the thronging faces which I had flyingly caught sight of through my veil there lay an expression that was not solely curiosity—a kind of hunger, a doglike gleam. I remember one thin-legged, ferrety, red-haired lad in particular. Well, no matter. The comedy was brief, and it was Mrs. Stocks who lowered the curtain. Attracted by all this racket and hubbub in the street, she was protruding her round head out of her precincts. Like fox to its hole, I scrambled over her wooden doorstep, whisked round her person, and fled for sanctuary into her shop. She hustled poor Pollie in after me, wheeled round on my pursuers, slammed the door in their faces, slipped its bolt, and drew down its dark blue blind.
In the sudden quiet and torpor of this musty gloom I turned my hunted eyes and stared at the dark strip of holland that hid me from my pursuers. So too did Mrs. Stocks. The round creature stood like a stone out of reach of the surf. Then she snorted.
“Them!” said she, with a flick of her duster. “A parcel of idle herrand boys. I know them: and no more decency than if you was Royalty, my dear, or a pickpocket, or a corpse run over in the street. You rest a bit, pore young thing, and compose yourself. They’ll soon grow tired of themselves.”
She retired into the back part of her shop beyond the muslined door and returned with a tumbler of water. I shook my head. My sight pulsed with my heartbeats. As if congealed into a drop of poison, I stared and stared at the blind.
“Open the door,” I said. “I’d like to go out again.”
“Oh, miss! oh, miss!” cried Pollie.
But Mrs. Stocks was of a more practical turn. After surveying my enemies from an upper window she had sent a neighbour’s little girl for a cab. By the time this vehicle arrived, with a halfhearted “Boo!” of disappointment, the concourse in the street had all but melted away, and Mrs. Stocks’s check duster scattered the rest. The cab-door slammed, the wheels ground on the kerbstone, my début was over. I had been but a nine minutes’ wonder.
XVII
We jogged on sluggishly up the hill, and at last, in our velvety quiet, as if at a preconcerted signal, Pollie and I turned and looked at one another, and broke into a long, mirthless peal of laughter—a laughter that on her side presently threatened to end in tears. I left her to recover herself, fixing my festering attention on her engagement ring—two hearts in silver encircled by six sky-blue turquoises. And in the silly, helpless fashion of one against the world, I plotted revenge.
The cab stopped. There stood the little brick house, wholly unaffected by the tragic hours which had passed since we had so gaily set out from it. I eyed it with malice and disgust as I reascended my Bateses and preceded Pollie into the passage. Once safely within, I shrugged my shoulders and explained to Mrs. Bowater the phenomenon
